A “path light” generally refers to a light source that illuminates a pathway. By comparison, a room light illuminates, for example, an entire room including any included pathways. Path lights provide more targeted illumination and are typically utilized to illuminate a sidewalk or other path on the exterior of a home, or a particular path or hallway on the interior of the home, especially those that may not be properly or efficiently illuminated by room lights. In a commercial setting, such as a movie theater, a path light can be utilized to illuminate stairways, corridors or other paths to direct consumers to their seats or to exits, and can include a variety of lighting sources, controls and sensors, such as ambient light sensors, to ensure that the path light illuminates only in dark conditions.
However, since many of the path light control devices are battery powered, each has to consider how frequently power is used to sample the associated environmental sensors, such as ambient light sensors (ALS), which can consume large amounts of power. At the same time, the control device needs to react quickly to various events such as a moving presence in the path light environment or the switching on and off of other light sources in the area, so it cannot sample the sensors too infrequently.
Accordingly, in some situations, the path light may not respond in an optimal manner to the detected user presence and ambient light conditions. For example, the path light may operate using a single sampling mode or sampling period which can be inefficient when conditions indicate another sampling mode or sampling period may perform better. In cases where the path light can operate using multiple sampling modes or sampling periods, the transition between each may not be designed to balance user comfort, energy efficiency, sensor position and proper system function.